My personal pc is a 2013 MBP, so glossy screen. My work pc is a hp probook 430 g5 (~2 years old) with a matte screen.
The one that I would take out in the garden when it was sunny was the mac. Sure, I could see myself in it, I had to set the backlight to 100%, but it was possible to focus my eyes such that the text on screen was actually readable. Of course, this implies black text on white background and to sit in such a way as not to have too contrasty a background.
The matte screen of the HP was completely useless. It was just a big blotch of white, it was next to impossible to see the text. I even took out an actual external monitor once to try it out, a Dell P2415Q with a backlight that's blinding inside. Same problem.
Now sure, when there's not a high level of ambient light, the matte screen is more easy to use as there are no reflections. But as soon as there's a source of light that shines on it (and there are cases when you can't control it) it's game over.
Protip: clean the macbook screen from time to time. Even if it doesn't look dirty. I wear glasses, so I use the cleaning spray on the screen. It always amazes me how much better it is afterwards.
It most certainly is not. Solarized is a low contrast theme by design and fails accessibility standards for text contrast.
Pardon the choice of words, but it is the only effective way I could convey my opinion re solarized and most color schemes.
Most color schemes try too hard to differentiate everything, lack good contrast and do not aid in understanding the code. Many of them and as a good example solarized, lack good contrast. I had so many issues trying to find a good scheme, that I resorted to creating my own for Jetbrain software, and make due with some of the rainglow schemes on VSCode. The themes are mostly black text on white background and the highlights are not obtrusive so as to draw more attention that the core. In the end, I spend more effort trying to mute the loudness of the colours than reading the content.
Could you elaborate on this? Maybe you've enabled font smoothing?
They convinced the world by pumping up the brightness and providing better color than other matte screens.